Adventures in Walking

Our potluck yesterday evening was a success-- lots of good food and good company. Unfortunately I failed to take any photos, so don't have much to post about it. So I'll talk about walking instead.

In my PT sessions, part of what we work on is walking in lots of different ways. Recently, I've been working on walking a bit with no support, using parallel bars to catch myself when I falter, and last week I made some big improvements. This is a video that Jeff took on Thursday:

My physical therapist, Lola, is the other person in the video with me. She has I think something like 30 years experience working in neuro rehab, and pushes me to work hard every session, always taking me just beyond my comfort zone. And it's working, I'm seeing improvement week to week. My journey into outpatient therapy was a bit rocky-- I went a full two months after leaving the hospital without having any therapy, related to moving, getting set up in a new healthcare system, and communication breakdowns within the system. However, after finally getting into therapy, I have been very lucky to have been paired with an excellent physical therapist, and excellent rehab facilities. No disrespect to my inpatient therapists in Seattle (who were great), but I think the rehab services available here in Regina are actually better than rehab services in Seattle. I never would have predicted that before moving, and it has come as a welcome surprise.

Part of my homework for PT is to walk (with Jeff spotting me) with forearm crutches. Here is a picture from today's walk:

This is a walkway connecting two buildings on campus-- all the main university buildings are connected in a big loop, so it's a great place to practice walking on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Note the cactus plants indoors, in contrast with the snow outside. It is currently about -7F (-22C) outside, but inside is warm and cozy. I walked a total of 40 minutes, with a break halfway through, and went probably a total of about a half mile (it's hard to measure distances inside buildings, but I estimated with this). It takes all my concentration to walk with the crutches, and afterward I'm mentally and physically exhausted.

I mentioned before that my stamina keeps improving,and that walking with the 4-wheel walker is getting easier. Well, inspired by a friend's recent blog post about doing a 5k turkey trot (that would be you, Andrew), I decided to sign up to walk a 5k while I'm in Eugene-- the "holiday hustle." I'm not sure I'll be able to finish, and if I do finish, it will take me a very long time. But I checked with the race coordinator, and since there will also be a 10k and a half marathon happening at the same time, the course doesn't close until three and a half hours after the race starts, so if I'm going to finish, it will be within that time. Jeff is going to walk with me, and maybe my mom too. It's exciting to have a new goal to work toward!

Loucks family Christmas, American Thanksgiving

Last weekend, Jeff's brother and sister and their respective partners came to visit us to celebrate an early Christmas. For various reasons Jeff's family will be unable to convene in December so we did an early holiday celebration, consisting of food, games, karaoke (at home on a pay-per-view type channel through our cable company), going to see the new James Bond movie, a gift exchange, and having a fun and relaxing weekend. Here is a photo of us at a restaurant, just as everyone was about to head to the airport:

Caroline, Jeff, Allison, Bridget, Ray, Shuo

This coming weekend, we are hosting a potluck to celebrate American Thanksgiving, as we did to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving when we lived in the US. We invited our psychology department colleagues, and expect that we'll have 16 guests and lots of good food. Our house is quite small, so we won't have room for everyone to sit, but I don't think they'll mind too much.

It struck me over the weekend at several points that I felt "normal." At least a few times I caught myself having a good time, not thinking about my physical limitations. I didn't realize just how much of a focus this has been for me until suddenly it wasn't a focus. I think that in one way or another, every waking moment since surgery I have been thinking about my physical health, either overtly or in the back of my mind. Until this weekend. There were moments this weekend when that wasn't the case, and it felt good. I can only assume that there is more of this to come.

On a related note, Jeff and I will be in Eugene Dec. 21-30. Send me an e-mail if you will be in town and want to get together! And happy Thanksgiving!

Lots of Snow, and Then and Now Part 2

Between Friday morning and this morning we got about a foot of snow. Apparently winter has arrived. Here is Jeff shoveling snow on Friday evening:

And then again this morning:

Note that you can tell how much snow fell in between by how buried the car across the street looks. Jeff ventured out to get groceries, and it took him about 90 minutes to shovel the walk and dig our car out (parked behind the house, not on the street). We are definitely going to make sure our next house has a garage.

Tuesday will mark 5 months since my surgery. As I was gathering photos for my last post, I also looked at photos from the past 5 months, and it really is amazing how much I have recovered in that time. A rundown of my current status:
-Vision is almost completely back to normal. I still see double if I look certain directions, but this is not really causing any problems functionally.
-Sensation in the right half of my body is still quite impaired, head to toe, but is better than it was at first. I am also learning to compensate for lack of sensation, for example by using visual cues (which is much easier now that my vision has improved).
-Proprioception is much, much better than it was before, but still not perfect. For example, I have a really hard time determining whether I'm holding my head straight.
-Balance continues to improve, though is still not at all normal. I can now stand for minutes at a time without hanging on to anything, and can do things like stand and brush my teeth unassisted. However, this requires some concentration.
-Although my discoordination/ataxia is still limiting me quite a bit, it has also measurably improved. I totally ruined that knitting project I tried to work on right after surgery (just made too many mistakes and couldn't fix them, such that the whole thing started to unravel) and I was recently able to completely re-start it, and it is now going fine.
-My strength and stamina are improving quite a bit. I have physical therapy twice a week and go to the gym and/or do PT exercises at home most days. I'm working almost full workdays, and sleeping only 9 hours a night.
-Walking keeps getting better, and I am now using my four-wheel walker for functional daily walking, and working in therapy on trying to walk with less support. The four-wheel walker has some great advantages over other types of assistive devices, including being able to carry things around with me. Here is a picture from last week:
 
This is our cat Maddy, and Jeff has dubbed my walker basket the "Maddy caddy." It's nice to be able to carry my kitty again :)

Then and now

This Halloween was the 10-year anniversary of my first date with Jeff. It's hard to believe it's been that long! We celebrated by going out for a late dinner at a fancy restaurant, after handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. We had a lovely evening, and it spurred me to reminisce about times gone by. So I will share some photos of me and Jeff from the past 10 years:

Portland, December 2002

Halloween 2003 (What are we supposed to be?)

Florence, OR, September 2004

Halloween, 2005 (Jeff is a software pirate)

Hawaii, August 2006 (our honeymoon)

Christmas in Kingston, ON, 2007

Germany, September 2008

San Diego, August 2009

Seattle, October 2010

Wallace Falls (near Stevens Pass, WA), August 2011

Oregon coast, May 2012

A walk in the cold

The temperature outside is currently 27F (-3C) with 22mph winds, for a "feels like" temp of 7F (-14C). And I decided it seemed like a good day to go for a walk outside, just as it started snowing. My reasoning? I just got a new walker, the kind with four big wheels that can handle uneven terrain, and I wanted to try it out outside. It's a pretty cool set of wheels-- it even has a little flip-down seat so that I can take breaks if I want to go longer distances. We have already determined that I can go much faster with this new walker indoors, and it helps me to be much more functional around the house, because now I can carry things in the detachable basket, and can move around much more smoothly. I couldn't use this type of walker before because my balance and coordination were too poor, and I would have had too difficult a time controlling it. But now, as my coordination and strength improve, it's working great for me.

So, Jeff and I bundled up and drove a 1/2 mile to a park where we can access a nice path along the (now frozen!) creek, and set out for a cold, windy, snowy walk. It was tough going at times, but we walked for about 40 minutes, and went for one whole mile! Here is a picture of me at the halfway point:

This means that with this new walker, I can walk further than I could before, and it only takes me about twice as long as normal to walk that distance, even in adverse conditions. This is a huge improvement, and really gives me hope that I'm going to recover fully. There are still a lot of things I have difficulty with, and I still have lots of discouraging symptoms and limitations, but in the past few weeks I've had some categorical shifts that keep me hopeful. So as cold as it was, it was definitely worth it to go out today.

In other news, it was Jeff's birthday yesterday. We baked a cake, had a few people over, got take-out Chinese food, and then went to a movie. Here is the cake, chocolate with orange-flavored cream-cheese frosting, and decorations befitting a near-Halloween birthday:

I did about half the work on the cake, and made the marshmallow chocolate-chip ghost, but had to tell Jeff what to write on it. It was delicious, and we will be having leftovers tonight :)